Phantom Chimes
by PPM
Summary: After waking up screaming her name, Beast Boy realises just how much he had with Terra and vows to see her again. Chapter Three up. This story is complete.
1. Haunted by the Melody

Author's Notes: This is my first shot at TT fanfiction, so be gentle. This might be a one-shot, it might not. This is my "on the side" fanfic to try to break the writing impediment I occasionally develop. The italicised dialogue comes straight from ep. 2x10 "Betrayal" and I don't own it, nor do I own the Titans.

* * *

"Terra!"

Beast Boy screamed into the night. He shot up from his prone position and, sweating, listened. The cry echoed in his own head like so many church bells, reverbs invariably bold and deep but growing softer after every strike. As the phantom chimes rang inside his skull, his eyes tried to pierce the darkness enveloping him from all directions. Too tired to use his powers to assist him, he instead squinted and concentrated as much as he could manage.

And his room slowly came into focus. First, the lower bunk of the bed on which he lay. Thinking of that only reminded him of how he had always wanted to keep her there overnight and just hold her close; how he wanted them to fall asleep in each other's arms like he had seen in one movie that he'd been tricked into seeing because of a deceptive title; how he longed for her warmth just once more in his life. But he couldn't hold her close any more. They could never fall asleep together, even if she had wanted to. As for the last case...well, even volcanic stone lost its warmth eventually.

She had betrayed them, her friends, and he knew this. He'd said it: "Slade was right: You don't have any friends". No matter how much he replayed that scene, that one horrible night in the hall of mirrors that led to her...to the incident, he couldn't convince himself that what he had said was right. She'd done the most extreme thing possible: She'd tried to kill the Titans. She'd been working for Slade the whole time, and he trusted her. But why couldn't he shake his feelings for her? What was wrong? She'd betrayed them -- it was inexcusable! Unforgivable!

...But that was it, wasn't it? She'd realised her mistake and rebelled against Slade. And they'd forgiven her. And it was because she'd been forgiven that he could still feel for her. She was a good person. Misguided, maybe...but definitely a good person. Perhaps that was why Beast Boy felt a twinge of guilt after solving his immediate problem.

"We had something, something special...and I ruined it," he sadly confessed to nobody but the darkness. He climbed out of his bed entirely and made it to his window without once stumbling over a pizza box or game system. Ever since...that time, he had been keeping his room eerily clean for a reason unknown to even himself.

He stood in front of the window for a good ten minutes, reflecting and wondering about what it could have been like. Eventually, though, his mind brought itself to that one particular night.

_"Oh! Beast Boy, it's...I don't know what to say!"_

_"You could say 'yes', 'cause...I'm about to ask you out on a date."_

_"Oh...wow..."_

_"So...wanna do something tomorrow night?"_

_"Tomorrow? I...I'm sorry, Beast Boy, I can't."_

_"But..."_

_"I just can't!"_

The silver box that he had made for her. A heart. It was symbolic of how he felt about her -- another thing he picked up from that movie. It was supposed to have won her over, but it didn't. "Not immediately," the green boy commented to himself.

_"Wanna go out?"_

_"Huh? Yeah! I mean, uh...that's cool. But why didn't you just knock on my door?"_

_"Do you trust me?"_

He filled in the last line himself. "More than anyone I've ever met."

_"That's it,"_ he decided. Climbing onto the window sill, he noiselessly changed his form into that of a raven and, destination clear in his mind, flew off into the slightly purplish sky that heralded the eventual coming of dawn.


	2. Reveille

Disclaimer: I don't own Raven's emotions, but that doesn't mean that I don't express them from time to time. I still don't own the Titans. 

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"Beast Boy."

With one hand on her forehead, the purple-haired girl rolled over in her bed and muttered the offender's name. His cry had woken her from a sound sleep, one to which, even as she turned, she knew she wouldn't be able to return. Beast Boy's shout pounded in her head with no such grace as church bells; instead, it was as if her pink-cloaked persona were gleefully banging on a series of bass drums with careless disregard to anybody whose head she could be occupying.

She hated herself sometimes.

Managing to subdue the "musical" accompaniment enough to hear herself think, she did just that. _"Terra? Is Beast Boy still obsessing over her?"_ With a disgusted sigh, she rolled over again to face her wall. She heard a faint voice say something indistinguishable to her, outside of knowing that it belonged to Beast Boy.

As the result of an amazing lapse of reason and judgment on Robin's part (as well as a grand ignorance of one party's protests), Beast Boy's room was now almost directly adjacent to Raven's. Thick as the walls of the Tower were, she couldn't help but overhear most of what the changeling did. Thinking about some of the things she'd heard forced her to mentally smack many of her emotions repeatedly and with little restraint.

However, one of her emotions, garbed in an azure robe, escaped being repressed again long enough to catch her attention. It spoke to Raven and recalled her memories while it had the chance. _"Has he ever done something like this before?"_ At the thought, Raven blinked. Yellow-cloaked Reason dictated that no, he hadn't, and that something was most definitely troubling him, to which magenta Compassion and azure Curiosity simultaneously responded, _"Go. See what's wrong."_

Obeying herself, Raven slowly climbed out of bed and walked over to a small rack on which her purple robe hung. Lust earned itself a series of slaps (which she feared the emotion enjoyed a bit too much) for suggesting that Raven go wearing only her leotard. After clasping her cloak shut, she opened her door, turned left, and started walking the short trip to Beast Boy's room. Worry filled her mind as her bare feet steadily padded against the steel floor of the Tower's hall and lingered with her when she knocked on the green boy's door.

There was no response the first time she knocked. "Beast Boy?" Her concerned voice drifted through the door to the ears of nobody. Trying the knob, Raven found the door to be unlocked. "Odd," Suspicion raised its voice through its lavender vessel. "He doesn't leave his door open this late." Pushing the door open, she was greeted with a largely dark room lit only by the strange mix of moonlight and faded sunbeams creeping in from the large open window opposite Raven.

Her purple eyes, during a scan of the room, caught on a green bird in the sky beyond the window that appeared just to have left. "Beast Boy," she called softly, wistfully. "Where are you going?"

Reason piped up again. _"Remember from when you fought Terra? Robin said that Beast Boy was five kilometres east and eight hundred metres below the surface. He should be there."_

Every emotion responded at once, including Raven herself. "Terra's grave." Without even realising it, she found herself floating towards the window. Once she knew what she was doing, she gasped slightly -- but she didn't stop. "Beast Boy may need me now more than ever," she admitted while crossing the threshold into the reality outside of the Tower. As she followed the raven she knew to be her friend, she searched for something inside her, some emotion on whom she could place the blame for that admission, sorely convinced that something like that could not possibly have come from her.

-T-

Beast Boy thought nothing of distance or coordinates; he simply _knew_ where Terra rested. _"Jump City at night looks so peaceful,"_ he commented to himself with another deluge of sorrow. It, like most everything, reminded him of Terra, but specifically of their first -- and only -- date. Looking down upon the city didn't help his condition; unconsciously, he was flying almost the exact same path as the one on which she had taken him. Passing over their diner (and he would always think of it as "their" diner), he practically drooled as he remembered the glorious pie he had tasted there. The taste in his mouth was bittersweet, though, because he knew that the only reason it had been so delectable was that she had been there with him.

_"Okay, maybe it was really good pie, too," _he confessed as he left the diner behind and entered the chilling air of the amusement park. His heart raced and his wings beat faster than he thought possible. He'd had enough of that place and wanted to escape it as quickly as he could -- but not quickly enough, evidently. Five words plagued his memory and caused his flight to waver. Five words that he had said; five words that could not be less true, especially right now.

_"You don't have any friends."_

The words formed a black chorus in his mind. He said it; **he** told Terra that. He'd never been able to forgive himself, despite how much he tried to repress that sordid memory. The chorus escalated into a sinister crescendo as the words' power intensified and crippled him. His wings stopped beating and he plummeted down. During his fall, he regained his human form almost too quickly, like the stress of what he had done had finally convinced him to just...give up.

-T-

The daughter of Azar gasped with fear as she watched the beast writhe and winced at the noise of the impact. In a similar (though by all means more controlled) dive, she rushed to her fallen friend's side. Kneeling on the car's roof sent chills through her, as if the atmosphere affected those who had not been present just as fervently as those who had experienced it firsthand. Reluctant and jerky, she placed one hand behind his head and the other on his arm and, with the all-too-familiar chant of "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos," sent her power through him and attempted to heal the boy.

The pain he felt, though, was something that not even Raven could fix. At her touch his eyes opened into slits and he murmured, "Terra?"

Raven actually smiled legitimately. She was glad to see that he was conscious and alive, even if he had confused her with someone long since gone. "Close, Beast Boy."

His eyes widened to past what he believed humanly possible and he scrabbled out of Raven's arms. Once a safe distance from her, he exclaimed, "Raven! What are you doing here? How did you know I was gone?"

"You woke me up," came her bitter retort -- though something behind it suggested that it was not meant to be as harsh as she had said it to be. As if compensating, she steered the conversation away from herself. "You still miss her, huh?" Beast Boy's silence was an obvious answer. "I miss her, too, you know. Not as much as you, but...well, I will say that it's a bit odd around the Tower without her."

He laughed cynically. "Like you'd know. You never knew anything about her. You never even gave her a chance. You just wanted her out. You threw her away like trash." And now it was Raven's turn to be silent, though hers was contemplative rather than mournful. "She meant nothing to you! You don't miss her! I'm the only one who knows what it means to miss her!" He found his heart racing again from both anger and adrenaline.

"You're right," she confessed with the same lack of emotion she most often showed. "But that doesn't mean I can't try to help you. Does it, BB?"

He just stared for a few seconds in utter disbelief. "You...you called me 'BB'. You've never called me that."

"I think the situation calls for it. Now," she didn't even wait for an answer to her previous question. "You were heading to her, weren't you? Mind if I tag along?"

"I...that...uhm, sure!" Stumbling through his words, he barely got through saying, "The more, the merrier, right?"

"Are you up to flying there on your own, or should I give you a lift?"

He paused. "You know...I think I'm okay." He transformed almost immediately, and the pair of ravens continued their eastward journey together.

---

Author's Notes: I had some difficulty with this chapter initially, but once I got into it, I really liked writing it. I listened to a lot of Green Day while writing this, so I think that has something to do with it. MexEmoMusic OTP. My apologies to those who like BB/Terra without Raven getting in the way. I swear, come Ch3, Terra will show up. Seriously.


	3. Four Part Dissonance

Disclaimer: I own neither the Titans nor Slade.

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**Five kilometres east and eight hundred metres below the surface…**

"Slade!"

The yellow-haired girl, as soon as she regained use of her mouth and throat, said the name as if it were a curse. A blue laser was tracing her petrified body; every place it passed soon after reformed to flesh and blood: Slate gray into blonde and beige, into blue and steel. The laser stemmed from a miniscule module held by a silver-gloved hand. The armour of the hand's owner reflected a tamer cobalt than that of the laser, but the half-mask's colour never wavered.

"My apprentice," came the eerily calm voice. Terra, now completely reformed and full of hatred, spat in his face. There was a soft splat and his gauntlet rose without noise to wipe his face clean. At the last moment, though, he compressed his fingers into a truncheon and brought his fist to her face with superhuman force.

The geomancer reeled, spat blood onto the ground, and looked down, wondering why she couldn't dodge his blow. She discovered that it was because – and why else? – her feet were still fused to the earth. "Slade," she responded, still getting used to being able to talk again as shown by the wear in her disgust-laden voice. "I think you forgot something." A yellow glow surrounded both her hands and makeshift pedestal. Bringing her hands up above her head, she split the earth holding her in place and tore her altar from the ground.

Slade, watching her hover before him, replied simply, coolly, "Now, now." Electricity streaked about his right hand, still twisted into a fist, as he brought it up in a similar fashion. Identical bolts raced along Terra's right arm, and she could just tell that behind his mask, Slade was smiling with confidence. "I still control you."

-T-

**Eight hundred metres north…**

"You're pretty brave, to come back here alone in the middle of the night," Raven spoke to Beast Boy, who was clearing out rubble as a gorilla. "It's not like you." Her comments got her a hard, stern glare. The primate threw away the boulder he was carrying and morphed back into his human form. It was his turn to be frighteningly cold and emotionless.

"Have you ever been in love, Raven? It changes you." He said it in a way that asked no response, and for a while not even the purple-haired girl, in her infinite causticity, could think of one. Noting her silence, he filled the gap with something he hoped to be humourous, but turned out bitter. "It wouldn't kill you to help move these rocks, either."

"Yes, it would," she finally grasped the words. "Just because I miss her doesn't mean I'm eager to get her back." Her emotionless voice paused to let Beast Boy take it in, though she didn't think it was that big of a shock to his system. "The only reason I came here," Raven started again with brutal honesty, "was to make sure that you were okay. And now that I see that you are…"

"I see where you're going," the changeling admitted with rising anger. "Fine! Go! I don't need you here anyway!" He didn't wait for a reply or any sort of defense; instead, he transformed into a mammoth and began lifting some of the larger rocks with his great trunk. Most of those rocks were placed so that his back would be to his company.

Raven was actually hurt – only very slightly, just enough to bother her; it was still there, though. Beast Boy had never said or acted anything like that to her before. Without even saying "goodbye" or casting any glances, she lifted off the ground and began her long return to the tower alone.

-T-

**In the skies of Jump City...**

"_Stupid stubborn Beast Boy. Can't he see what I see? By Azar, she **betrayed** us! No amount of anything is going to change that. She took our trust and made it her plaything! …And anyway, she'll just hurt him if he sees her again. He'll wonder what could have been, and he'll be destroyed – again – and he'll be moping for days._

"_He's bound to hurt himself through this." _The cloaked girl, practically invisible against the blues and purples of the very near dawn, sighed with exasperation. _"I just hope he'll be able to deal with it."_

-T-

**Below the surface…**

"I broke free of you once; I can do it again!" Terra cried with triumph as she fought against Slade's vicarious grip on her. The masked man chuckled at his ignorant captive as he fingered the beam device he held. He aimed it at Terra's resisting hand and pressed a button; a garnet laser connected with her hand and returned it to the stone from which it had been transformed. The geomancer didn't look quite surprised, but rather…well, it would have been difficult to place her emotions at that particular time.

"You will obey me, apprentice, or I will return you to your pedestal and leave you to erode," came Slade's sinister proclamation. Terra simply smirked.

"You expect me to obey that? I'm no use to you as a statue, and it's pretty clear to me that you want me back. Using that little device isn't going to help you much if you're planning to get me back into the apprenticeship. Except for Cinderblock, stone isn't very obedient."

"Whether or not you live," he reminded her harshly, "is of no consequence to me."

"Oh, but I think it is. You're running out of people gullible enough to trick into being your apprentice and tough enough that the Titans couldn't defeat them. I'm your last resort, from where I'm standing." Her eyes flashed yellow as her volume escalated. "And I'm not going to serve you any more!" With disregard to the stability of the cavern, she threw down great chunks of the ceiling on top of Slade with her one human hand.

He, as usual, dodged the earthen deluge with little more than a few scratches. As he watched his former apprentice maneouvre through the air on her platform, his hands clambered for the matter-altering device on which he was certain he had had an excellent grip; to no avail, though. "No matter," he said quietly while avoiding a second partial cave-in.

In a flash, Slade was in front of her. She gasped slightly at his speed, still shocked even though she had experienced it before, and put up her one good hand as an almost automatic attempt to defend herself. With it came a slab of rock from below her, which the man of colossal strength punched through easily. Luck was on her side, though, as her defense did appear to surprise him: this gave her ample opportunity to rise above him and prepare what she hoped would be the final strike. Her arms rose like the thumb of Caesar, considering and determining Slade's fate all within a second's time, and fell with the earth above her, sealing it.

However, she was not quick enough. During Terra's theatrics, Slade had broken free of his slight state of delirium and noticed the rapidly lowering ceiling coming down on top of him. Seeming to never tire, he quickly appeared behind the impudent girl. "You disappoint me. My apprentice should not be so easy to fool." He had, apparently, only been acting surprised so as to see what she would do.

All of the sudden, though, a wall of rock slammed Slade from the side: the same wall of rock, in fact, that had once been the ceiling. He grunted; she grinned. If anything, it was proof to her that even he was not infallible. "Neither should you," Terra smugly returned, rotating in the air to face where he had landed.

The only problem was that he was not there.

-T-

**Above ground…**

Beast Boy was frantically casting rocks everywhere, trying to find some way through to where he knew she was. Some of the rocks had been there; some, he had created on his own. He couldn't remember the location of the original passage, which prompted him to start his own – but it didn't really matter to him any more. Some part of him felt it: Someone, whom he believed to be Terra, was in danger.

The sun had since risen, but the cavern into which the lover had dug himself showed nothing but shadows. Though time was the last thing on his mind, he realised that he had been at this endeavour for too long. He was tiring out and his body screamed for rest. All he could do was force himself to believe that she would be behind this next shelf, past these next boulders, right there waiting for him.

However, one can only run on emotion for so long; Beast Boy was no exception. His transformations from monkey to mammoth to man began slowing down; his shattering punches and rams grew less mighty; he eventually considered just going home and forgetting about this situation for right now. The shaft would still be here when he returned, after all. He put down the boulder of moderate size he was holding, turned back into the helpless boy he was, and sighed deeply.

Quite unexpectedly and rather quickly, the ground started sliding from below him. He scrabbled backwards to save himself, then peered down the resulting hole.

"It can't be."

He wanted to scream her name, and he almost did, until he saw the reason for her to be moving the earth once again. He saw her reason for fighting dash around and get hit by what had almost been Beast Boy's quite literal downfall.

And he saw Slade recover too quickly from that hit. He saw clearly how Slade had again moved behind Terra. He saw her turn around in confusion. And he watched with absolutely terrifying detail as the fiend in the half-mask raised a fist to her innocent body and thrust it forward. And he heard the sounds of bones breaking.

And he jumped down.

-T-

**On the roof of Titans Tower…**

Raven, deep in meditation, felt the second-strongest spike of emotion she had ever felt. It was utter and complete despair – the kind someone would feel after a death. It was not hers, though; she knew it to be Beast Boy's, but to be so strong as to be able to feel it from five kilometres away must have meant that…

"_Good, then," _Jealousy cut. _"Less competition for the spot of the telekinetic one."_

"_How can you say that? Beast Boy's clearly destroyed!" _Compassion argued heatedly.

"_We said he would be like that anyway," _Raven told herself. It seemed to quell certain emotions, which was exactly what she needed to continue meditating properly, which she did.

However, there was a reason that the despair was only the _second_-strongest: The next assault – the only thing it could be called – was even more powerful and not only broke her trance but caused her to stagger in midair. _"This anger! It can't be…" _She gasped in disbelief. _"It can't be Beast Boy…but it is…"_

Though she had vowed to leave him be, again she found herself almost unconsciously rising from her stance and floating off to where she had been not hours before.

-T-

**Later, underground…**

She arrived at the scene of a fierce battle long since decided. The small chamber of earth was close to collapsing, supported only by a few arbitrarily placed pillars that had sprung from the ground. Boulders had been smashed into dust. But the chamber was not Raven's main concern. What lay in the centre was.

Beast Boy was on his back, struggling to breathe, with too great a number of cuts, bruises, and abrasions on his exposed skin. Several triangular orange shards had fallen in a halo around his head, and it was clear that his left fist was bleeding.

Kneeling beside him was the girl whom Raven believed to be dead. She was clutching her chest and crying; crying from the pain of what had happened to Beast Boy, not from the physical pain. She held a small silver rod between two fingers of her other hand, the purpose of which was unclear. Raven heard the blonde girl say something through choking tears.

"He fought until the end…"

At that, Raven finally stepped forward to embrace her nightmare and attempt to ward it off. "He won't die."

Terra jerked her head up as quickly as she could comfortably do upon hearing the familiar voice. "Go away," she insisted. "You can't help him."

"Yes, I can," Raven insisted back while walking to Beast Boy's body and kneeling over it the same way. "He won't die, because I can heal him."

Though, so near Terra, she noticed that the reason she was fighting for breath was not because of her tears. She was injured at least as badly as Beast Boy, if not worse. Raven debated healing the traitor with herself, until Reason worked out, _"If you don't heal her, you'll be as bad as she was."_ That was enough to convince her.

"Do you trust me, Terra?" she asked. The girl's silent nod came after Raven had already begun the healing process. She placed one hand on each of her friends' chests and began her chant.

-T-

**Later still…**

Beast Boy's eyes opened.

The purple witch had kept trying to heal him long after she had finished with his love interest. The only sounds had been her steady drone and Terra's quiet sobs. But, as Raven had predicted, Beast Boy did not die, and she did heal him.

When he sat up, Terra wrapped her arms around him. Beast Boy raised no protest and returned the embrace. Raven just smiled.

There was no drone. There were no sobs.

Everything was finally silent.

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Author's Notes: Okay, that took me entirely too long to write. Sorry, but I had some issues of my own with which I had to contend.

My major concern with this chapter is how I portrayed Slade. I'm still not entirely confident with him. Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Much thanks to my beta reader, DarthNat, even though he's convinced that Slade is better than Terra.

Whether or not this is the last time you'll hear the phantom chimes can only be answered in the echoes of events transpired.


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